D&D 5E [+] Design & Development: Magic Item Pricing

Most weapons, armor, ammunition, and I’d say at least half of wondrous items, most wands, staves, some magical books, most magic boots, gloves, cloaks, rings, and potions, that are useful to adventurers are also useful to soldiers, knights, ship captains, guards, bodyguards, and general rich folk.

Remember that historically, rich nobles commissioned swords from the best swordsmiths they could get, simply because they could, and wanted to have the fanciest, most prestigious sword or suit of armor, or whatever.

Adventurer-useful stuff would definitely have a *much* bigger market than just adventurers.

for instance, any kingdom with armed people paid by the state wants a flametongue sword. Any merchant with guards does. Any mercenary company does.

Refrgerators are great, but historically nations spend rather a lot of war technology.
 
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I think a lot of the obvious points have been made: pricing has to be relative to level; it's hard to build in the effects of cumulation/stacking, but these are pretty crucial for balance; etc.

Elaborating on another point that's been made: +1 leather is not a heap more valuable than studded leather, and so probably shouldn't cost the same as getting +1 studded, or +1 plate, which allows breaking out of the limits of the armour chart.

The same sort of thing goes for weapons, too. Compared to a +0 longsword, a +1 longsword grants (say) about +1.5 to expected damage per attack (say your base chance to hit is 7/10, for 1d8+4; well now it's 3/4, for 1d8+5). But a +1 dagger, compared to +0, grants only about +1 to expected damage per attack (7/10 for 1d4+4 becomes 3/4 for 1d4+5). (The dagger's expected damage multiplier is about 11/9, compared to 5/4 for the longsword - pretty comparable, but working on a smaller base.)

That said, some weapons are more likely to faciliate landing other damage bonuses (eg sneak attack) which makes the maths harder and increases their desirability.

If you're going for a price list you want constant rather than purchaser-relative prices. But I think you do want to think about optimal uses - so daggers and shortswords need to be priced to reflect a thief's interest in them, rather than the quirky dagger-fighting paladin. And with items that can stack, evaluate the higher-level ones (eg same bonus but no attunement required, or no encumbrance, or whatever else signals them as higher level) on the basis that they are stacking with the lower-level ones, and hence price them at even higher level.

We should not allow level 9 scrolls on the cheap - what's the hard limit on 1 spell per day worth if all you need to do is unload a few tens of thousands of gold on scrolls?

<snip>

In fact, scrolls need to be fundamentally more expensive than in 3rd edition (and therefore Sane). The edition is after all built upon "no magic items needed", so infusing dozen of scrolls throws everything out of whack.
The same probably goes for potions, wands etc that duplicate spell effects. (Another consideration that points in the same direction: in 5e the AD&D function of attack spell wands (giving MUs something to do) is replaced by cantrips.)

On the other hand, the DMG assumption that a consumable should reasonably cost half of the equivalent permanent item is of course completely bonkers. Utility, folk! When you feature magic shops you give players a choice (that's the whole point!), and no player will ever pay X for a single-use item when a permanent use-as-much-as-you-like item costs 2X.
I think this depends a lot on what the item is.

If the consumable is 100 gp, and the permanent item is 200 gp, and the party has (say) 5,000 gp to spend, then I agree with you - they'll buy the permanent.

But if the party is poor (= low level), and needs the item for one particular purpose, then the consumable can become quite attractive - eg they need a PC to be able to breathe underwater for one particular heist; or they need to power up the rogue with magic to get one good sneak attack against the wererat; or whatever it is.

To try and abstract out a general principle: if consumables are cheap compared to permanent items, they become attractive to players of higher level (= richer) PCs trying to build a grab-bag of capabilities; if they're relatively expensive (eg half price), then they're attractive mostly to player of (relatively) lower level PCs wanting to boost their capabilities for some particular focused purpose.

Either seems a viable approach, but maybe the second is closer to the default spirit of 5e?

As the DM you determine how much gold the party gets in any given encounter. As the GM you also set the prices of items (especially ones with no normal list price). So really we are setting an exchange rate of encounters to magic items.
This is more-or-less how 4e handled it, although mediated through the treasure parcel system.
 

Most weapons, armor, ammunition, and I’d say at least half of wondrous items, most wands, staves, some magical books, most magic boots, gloves, cloaks, rings, and potions, that are useful to adventurers are also useful to soldiers, knights, ship captains, guards, bodyguards, and general rich folk.

Remember that historically, rich nobles commissioned swords from the best swordsmiths they could get, simply because they could, and wanted to have the fanciest, most prestigious sword or suit of armor, or whatever.

Adventurer-useful stuff would definitely have a *much* bigger market than just adventurers.

for instance, any kingdom with armed people paid by the state wants a flametongue sword. Any merchant with guards does. Any mercenary company does.

I completely agree

Refrgerators are great, but historically nations spend rather a lot of war technology.
Napoleon offered a substantial reward to whoever could come up with a way to preserve lots of food - this lead to the invention of canning :)
 

Once you cover the ability to break DR/magic (or in 5e terms, resistance or immunity to nonmagical weapon attacks), the value of each additional +1 bonus is much greater in 5e than 3rd. Bounded accuracy means that that +1 is a much greater proportion of total bonus to hit and damage than it was in 3e.

This is very true. A level 1 fighter has a proficiency bonus of +2. A +3 sword gives him the same base to hit value as a *level 13* fighter. That's quite the leap.

Also, "vanilla +" weapons and armor don't require atunement, that's another bonus.
 

Ok so some thoughts.

First, disclaimers.
I have not read all the pages so far. I got thru maybe four. So some of this may be already there.
I am not generally enthusiastic on the chances of success or usefulness of this, but that is not a part of this thread so i toss it out only because of the transparency.

Some various ideas and thoughts.

* I like the idea of a beginning point on focusing on "lvevl" or rather "the place in the campaign where..." for valuing items. I think that approach has multiple layers in it - for instance - an amulet of the planes might be nigh worthless to a party of first level characters if it means they can suddenly go from "outnumbered by orcs" to "outnumbered by fire elementals." Simply put it can go both ways since obviously a cure light wounds twice a day might be huge for beginners but mostly a waste of time for 11th level folks.

* I like the idea of defining some standards for basic party assumptions - and even the assumption of combat front and center every session. If that is also shown at the final list as what it is based on then that will help show the final result and how applicable it can be to any given campaign.

However, some things to consider:

* We need an assumption on rests and the like between those every session combats. We need some basis for knowing whether a scroll of cure light and a scroll of prayer of healing favors the former over the latter because we are not assuming time for short rests or 10m windows of healing.

* We need to consider an assumption that some items that have combat usefulness may simply not be able to be scored uniquely as their use is so circumstantially biased to make a "meaningful" score based on utility not worthwhile. So, to start to along these lines i propose we have a sort of "circumstantial pricing" category where we list a "value" assigned by the Gm based on their assumption of how frewuent the circumstance will come up in their game or at least say in the next 5 levels. As a ballpark, Remember the assumption is combat front and center every session:
Always - basically every session.
Very Common - 8+ session out of 10
Common - 5-7 sessions out of 10
Uncommon - 3-4 sessions out of 10
Rare - 1-2 sessions out of 10
Very Rare - Maybe not at all but maybe 1 session out of 10.

So for a great many things this circumstantial factor could be playing a part in the pricing, multiplying the costs to adjust it. Then for many such elements all we have to do is value the "IMPACT WHEN IT OCCURS" and let the frequency/circumstance bonuses adjust for how common it is ***and*** allow an easy way for the Gm to adjust the price list for his campaign.

Example: Dragon Slayer sword vs Undead Smiting vs Shiftkiller - we can judge them soley by what their bonuses do and then let the "frequency/circumstantial factor" be something we leave open or even if we choose "uncommon" we provide the Gm the easy way to adjust for frequency in his own campaign by just including the frequency/circumstance calculation.

* While i think the "what point it comes into the game" as a good way to settle for "bought" gear, i think actually going to the point of "level" is a false precision. So many of the assumptions going into this still have wide variances depending on parties and challenges. Is there really going to be any case to be made for 10th vs 11th or 12th vs 13th or so on and so forth that will not be basically just arbitrary? So, instead i propose a tier based approach. instead of trying to pin things down to a specific level i suggest we looknat the tiers and basically strive to ***at first*** get to a "working" tier-price instead of level-price.

By this i mean that all the items we want to choose to assign a "value to" we assign a value of 1-4 based on what tiers we expect those items to be available in shoppes. That is not saying they might not be there at any, but that we will assign prices to them based on those tiers.

Obviously if we **can** achieve a good solid tier-based pricing, then it could be possible to get a more defined "sub-tier-by-level" pricing for dividing them up even further. However if we **cannot** get it even to work at the tier-pricing, why shoot for the level-pricing. Essentially, if we cannot solve tic-tac-toe, best not get to wanting to build suduko puzzles.

* Finally we do need a benchmark.

Here would be my suggestion of a benchmark for a starting price for an item.

At tier-X you should be able to afford at least 1 items with limited but reliable uses that represent powers available at tier-X-1. You should be able to afford more items of tier-x-2. Buying any item of tier-x at tier-x should be extremely difficult, maybe the result of pooled party fund for a single.

The idea here is simple, to keep the "most current character abilities" the top of your option pile and let the "bought" stuff be there for filling in the blanks and backup. this also leaves to session based awards and such the options for the Gm to give the players "current tier" items and even "higher tier items" as a matter of story and objective, not just commerce.

So, "boots of flying" would be a tier-2 item and would be purchasable at tier-3 prices. meanwhile

* Given the way tier-3 is so limited (thinking of limited slots control etc) i think it might be a good idea to have either tier-3 and tier 4 items never be "priced" for sale or to have them definitely take a bump in price beyond the norm.

just a smattering of different ideas - some related to each other.
 

Napoleon offered a substantial reward to whoever could come up with a way to preserve lots of food - this lead to the invention of canning :)

"Amateurs think tactics... professionals think logistics." A quote i have heard from more actual military than i care to remember.

But the premise of this thread is that [tactical] combat is front and center most every session and is the basis for assigning "value"

A ring of true resurrect everyone we want within 100 miles on the first full moon of the year would have a net value of ZERO for this pricing model - it would seem - because that would have no tactical combat value.
 

I completely agree


Napoleon offered a substantial reward to whoever could come up with a way to preserve lots of food - this lead to the invention of canning :)

Yep!

The “bag of colding” on Critical Role would probably sell quite well, for that very reason. It was basically a bag of holding with less capacity, but that you could store perishables in without them rotting.
 

In a perfect system, every item would have it's own unique value. But, as I like to repeat to my fellow software developers now and then, we should not let perfection get in the way of good. Can we come up with a good (or at least decent) solution? Because I don't think there is a perfect one.

Basic options that I see, if I'm missing anything let me know. For the moment I'm ignoring actual GP values, see below.
  1. Price items on their "recipe". Cost should be based on what it takes to craft the item*.
    The problem with this one is that we don't have any recipes, and as others have pointed out it's not easy to reverse engineer them.
  2. Price items based on their desirability.
    Beauty, and desirability, is in the eye of the beholder and the campaign. How useful a bag of holding (or sovereign glue) depends on the campaign.
  3. Price items based on supply and demand.
    This seems to be a non-starter as well. In a world where magic exists, what items would be in highest demand? How do you know supply?
  4. Price items based on their rarity as defined in the DMG.
    This starts to be workable, but as people have pointed out +1 leather is no more valuable than plain old studded leather in most campaigns.
  5. Price items based on categories the DM defines, probably starting with rarity and breaking down into further sub categories.
    This is what I'm leaning towards.

So personally I'd start with rarity and then break it down into sub categories, similar to what XGTE does with minor and major items. Let's call these sub categories Consumable, Good, Better, Best. So a Potion of heroism is Rare/Consumable, Heward's handy haversack it Rare/Good, leather armor +1 is Rare/Better and studded leather +1 is Rare/Best.

This gives me a little more fidelity because +1 studded is better then leather, a belt of fire giant strength is a little better than a belt of frost/stone.

So that gives me buckets to put my items into. Now all I have to do is price those buckets, which has to be tied to expected wealth level and desired level of magic for PCs. Maybe in a future post.

There are still potential issues with stacking, but I think the biggest issue is +n shields added to +n armor. So maybe we just ban +n shields, and shields can be magical and have other cool effects but not bump AC?

*if magic items are for sale someone had to craft them, which for this discussion won't be a PC
 

There are still potential issues with stacking, but I think the biggest issue is +n shields added to +n armor. So maybe we just ban +n shields, and shields can be magical and have other cool effects but not bump AC?

*if magic items are for sale someone had to craft them, which for this discussion won't be a PC

One of the points i left out of my list - because it did not fit into the thread conceit that the itmes in the DMg/DND etc can be priced by utility - was that in fact it seems to me that *if* one wants items to be discretely price-able by "utility in abcd" one has to actually build items so that they can be discretely priced with clear measurable differences and distinctions.

For example, the +1 shield and +1 armor vs +2 armor or +2 shield pricing can be made to make sense with even geometric pricing per plus *if and only if* you build in other elements that matter to make it work.

For example if "attuned" was required for every "always on" type of item bonus and attuned slots were kept small then there is a big difference between the intrinsic value of +1 armor and +1 shield over a single +2 armor or shield - an additional attuned slot left open.

That is *just* an example but it goes to the point that some of the pricing issues may be not surmountable within a "utility pricing scheme" especially within a bonded accuracy system without the items being built/rebuilt to make the pricing scheme work. The DND 5e items were not built/rebuilt to make such a system work - in part perhaps because that limits options in design. So, whether or not we can accept "changing items to make pricing work better" as a satisfactory component will likely play a huge role in how successful or how inclusive a "utility flavor abc" pricing scheme can be.

IMO
 

[MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]: The sub category is definitely on the good track. And I think it would help "fix" some problems.

But I'm still not sure how to deal with items that are clearly in the wrong category. A +1 sword (uncommon) is clearly better than a vicious weapon (rare - it does +7 damage on a critical). And I think particular example forces us to think a bit about the root of the system.

So the vicious weapon is more expensive but costs more, because it has a greater rarity. Why should rarity affect the price? You are Bob the clever fighter with a big bag of gold at the magic pawn shop and you need a magic sword. Why would you pay more for the vicious weapon? I can only see two possible answers

1: PCs and NPCs don't fully understand how magical items work. WE - the players and GM - understand perfectly (let's hope!) the bonuses of a +1 and a vicious weapon. The PCs and NPCs do not. To them the vicious weapon, based on the partial information they have, is better, and therefore, worth more.

2: There are magical item "collectors". This is how I've resolved this issue in my campaign (there are occasional magical item auctions). In the Yellow City, the ruiling class is made bored and very wealthy slugmen. Many of them collect things, and some collect magical items. Their desire for the relatively rare vicious weapon drives up its price. Even though a +1 sword is "better", it's less interesting to have in your collection than the vicious weapon. In other campaign the collectors could be different - wealthy nobles of all ilk is usually a good answer.

So, in conclusion, a price system based on rarity, as defined by the DMG, is not "rational". We therefore have to decide "what's wrong" with our PCs/NPCs and keep this in mind when pricing.
 

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